Where Do They Belong?
by gmoney480
Summary: Let's talk about the characters in the Hunger Games, grown up in an oppressive system in a world different than ours but still carrying traits we've come to identify. Let's talk about the characters we have grown to love from a world not our own, and how they would be Sorted if they had grown up in another.
1. Peeta Mellark

Chapter 1: Peeta Mellark

Let's talk about the characters in the Hunger Games, grown up in an oppressive system in a world different than ours but still carrying traits we've come to identify. Let's talk about the characters we have grown to love from a world not our own, and how they would be Sorted if they had grown up in another.

People forget that when Hufflepuff said they'd take the rest that Hufflepuff was not just a place for the lost. It meant we will give you all that we can no matter the cost because no matter who you are or what you've done in the past if you want a home Hufflepuff will provide. You may be lost before you enter their house but you certainly won't be after.

Let's talk about Peeta. Peeta, who lives in a world shrouded in deceit and corruption and subterfuge lies by telling the truth. Everyone thinks that his love for Katniss is some trick, something for the cameras and sponsors but it's not.

How in a world lacking warmth he does not allow it to drain away his kindness, his empathy. He talks about not having any regrets except for a baby (he never says Katniss is pregnant). Maybe it hadn't existed yet but Peeta always had a vision for his future and that included a small tiny baby with his blonde hair and grey eyes that he always gets lost in.

Above all, Peeta is kind. He throws a loaf of bread to a little girl who he has loved for years but could never find the courage to talk to until he had nothing left to lose but his life, which was already forfeit anyway. But that's ok, Katniss understands actions more than words anyway and to her words always lie but actions tell your true feelings.

They think that he can spin stories from out of thin air but he spins them out of his heart.

He is the gentle giant, so strong from throwing sacks of flour in his father's bakery but he doesn't even consider using his strength against others, it's never occurred him (Katniss does, Katniss recognizes anything that can lead to survival). He knows going in that helping Katniss win means eventually he will die, and he does it anyway (he never thought he would get out alive).

Let's talk about the artist. Peeta lives to create, to paint and awe people with the splendor of his paintings. Peeta spins stories and can paint the world anew but all he wants is to make people's lives easier. He is a baker, capable of creating nourishment and his bread sustains the weary and the hungry. If it is necessary to fight for others he will, but when it is only his life on the line he will paint himself over and hide. He doesn't fight needlessly, he recognizes the value of creativity and how it can save your life as well as your soul. The artist, who was told 'show me your worth' and decided this is my worth, this painted mural in Rue's honor, this image of a child he never met but still made such an impact on his life. He chooses to create instead of destroy and made a portrait of a little girl killed before her time.

Peeta saw the suffering in District 11, and he sees a family of 6 children lose their eldest child and wondering which one will be the next casualty in the Games and tries to give them a portion of their winnings. Why would he ever need that much money?

He is not a flame, but he is still a bright spot of light, illuminating and sharing his light with all those around him.

Haymitch the drunkard, Johanna who suffered the same atrocities at the hands of President Snow and the Capitol, Effie, Katniss the girl who loves so bright and loses so much, the Morphling who he never knew, all these people he Peeta draws to himself and he accepts them all unconditionally. He just wants to take care of all these broken people and put them back together again. He wants to paint it all away, Katniss's nightmares, Haymitch's sorrow, and Johanna's screams.

Loyalty, dedication, fairness. These are the pillars of his House.

Let's talk about the second time Peeta was in the Arena. For Katniss, the worse sound the jabberjays could make were her sister's screams of terror, but for Peeta it was the sound of flesh hitting flesh. Before he left for the Arena the first time around his mother didn't even express remorse about his possible death, only optimism that District 12 may finally have a winner. Katniss. Let's talk about a boy who just wanted his mother's love, and no matter how hard he tried could never do anything right in her eyes.

Let's talk about a Peeta half-crazy out of his mind, not knowing who is who but still clinging on to Katniss in the only way he knows how to anymore, with violence. After brutal months of torture with Johanna's screams as his only companion violence is the only way he know to communicate anymore.

Let's talk about a boy who decides that dying as himself is worth more than surviving as a creation of the Gamemakers. Peeta, who wants to keep Katniss alive in any way he can, so for her he would lie and deceive, say they are already married, have Effie make his token a locket for her if only she would decide to live. He won't compromise his principles for himself, but for the life of someone else he will, because that is loyalty. There's a reason that when they were in the Arena, even with his mangled leg, Katniss had to drug him with sleep syrup to get the medicine he so desperately needed. A badger is deceptively strong and it doesn't matter how hurt he was, he would have never let her go alone, if at all. Not for him.

Let's talk about a boy who loves truth and just wants everything to be fair. Someone who is so concerned with what is reality and truth that he makes a game out of it, just to make sure that he continues to speak the truth. A boy who is brilliant with words and is a born politician if there ever was one, but tries to use words to make things better for everyone around him.

Let's talk about a boy who has Post Traumatic Stress but is healing and still loves just as deeply and is still kind and good and gets to hear the girl he loves so much sing for him for the end of his days. Who looks at his wife and still thinks she is the strongest person he ever met, even though Katniss still agrees with what Haymitch once told her: you could live a hundred lifetimes and never deserve that boy.

Let's talk about Peeta.


	2. Katniss Everdeen

Chapter 2: Katniss

Let's talk about Katniss, stubborn, tenacious, brave Katniss, who would be a Slytherin if she was ever sorted. Even though at first glance it wouldn't seem like Katniss doesn't have a Slytherin bone in her body she is the embodiment of the true Slytherin.

Above all else Katniss is a survivor. They push her down but she gets back up again and as she gets up she shoots. They expect her to stay down and she constantly defies their expectations, the inferno she carries inside her warping the odds, not into her favor but into her choice. She doesn't fight for the masses she fights for herself, for her friends and for her family. She cares for others, she's not heartless, but her immediate concern is them.

She is sly and cunning and ambitious, for who else but a Slytherin would crawl through a fence to the outside forest for meat (the fence is no longer electric so the only risk is getting caught. She doesn't try again once the electric current runs through it. She's a Slytherin, cautious and calculated and knows that the risks are greater than the rewards to try to go back. She's not a foolhardy Gryffindor who would brave current anyway, no matter the risk). She goes back and back again not for fun and games, not for the entire district but for not only the survival of her family but also the improvement. Food is how you improve your standing in 12, don't tell me Katniss didn't want better, didn't do everything in her power to learn how to make her family better because they had a goat and a cat and Prim stopped going to bed hungry. That's more than most families in 12 can claim. Katniss has done this all on her own, and will always do this for her sister and her mother. Katniss's mother isn't much but she is _hers_ so she will do whatever she can. This isn't even taking into consideration Prim.

Delicate, lovely, _intelligent_ Prim who just wants to heal people. Katniss loves her more than anything else in this word and wants to protect so so much. She will do anything she can to put a smile on her face, to keep Prim alive even if she has to break rules and sign up for more tesserae. Like the Sorting hat said, in Slytherin you will make your real friends, and no one else is allowed to make a Slytherin's people hurt, not if they can help it. Katniss couldn't, and her heart has never been the same. She will make the world _burn_ for what it did.

They may give her weapons and put her in the Arena again and again but she will decide where, what, and when her arrow hits. They can't take this away from her and she won't let them.

Let's talk about how when Katniss volunteered, she wasn't doing it for the glory of victory, or trying to give people hope, or as an act of defiance towards the capital. Decades later speculation will run rampant about ulterior motives but let them. She was doing it so she wouldn't have to watch a small, tiny girl who she cared about more than her own skin die as entertainment for the rich bastards in the Capitol. If she is going to be separated from her sister, it will be on her terms, not theirs, never theirs. This is how she exerts her control, how she takes the variables and _twists, _until the outcome is not theirs. The outcome may not be ideal, but it is hers to control.

Peeta may be the one who the people love, who can change a person's heart but Katniss is the one who protects him, who keeps them all alive. He knows the masses but she knows the dictators. It was her, after all, who suggested using the berries. She knows her cards and calls their bluff and if they were going to be killed it is always always always going to be on her terms.

It isn't bravery, it isn't empathy, it is tenacity and desire for life and that is why she won't quit and die like all the game makers want her to. Courage isn't even a factor; it is instinct that makes her volunteer for Prim. There was never any question that she wouldn't. A Gryffindor would volunteer for the adventure, a Hufflepuff for a stranger, but a Slytherin would volunteer only for those they consider to be their own.

Katniss never wanted to be a leader. She just wanted her loved ones to be safe, to hell with everyone else and when she failed to convince Snow she was madly in love with Peeta she decided to run away, to take her people and save themselves. A Gryffindor never runs away, this is a Slytherin move, tactical retreat to save the remaining soldiers. It is only by the actions of a Gryffindor that stops her from leaving, because he may be brash and stupid and far too idealistic but she loves him like a brother and will not leave him to die.

Katniss doesn't care about the masses, she cares about _people_. She cares for Prim and Peeta, her mother and Gale and Haymitch and Cinna, Effie, Johanna and Finnick and even for her prep team. She cares for the people she interacts with, for a little girl who fell into her life like a shooting star on a moonless night, only to leave in a burst lightening. Katniss still bears the scars Rue's death has wrought.

They try to keep her out of the fighting, make her a simple figure head for people to rally to, but she wrecks all their plans and refuses to keep out of the fight because she knows no other way to keep her people alive. She needs to get back Peeta, keep him safe from harm and no one is going to stop her, not Snow, not some District that has been absent and letting the Capitol do whatever they want to defenseless children.

She will never let herself be manipulated, even if her methods can be a bit ham-fisted they work. In an equation she is always the unknown variable, the outlier, the one that changes the carefully planned results and leaves people scratching their heads and wondering what happened.

A Gryffindor is loud and brash in their vengeance but Slytherin isn't nearly as just. They have vendetta, not vengeance. Gryffindor gets mad and even but Slytherin will level the playing field from a hill to a chasm. Snow tried to destroy two people that she loves and wrecked a third, he destroyed her home and Prim, don't even get her started on Prim, so she will take away his entire regime, his purpose, even his very life if that is what it takes to make him suffer.

Katniss isn't the best at manipulation through her words but her actions are so much more effective anyway, who needs words when Peeta uses them so much more effectively than she ever could. She is an inferno, a swirling mass of destruction that wrecks anything in its path, and eventually even itself, but she is always the one who lights herself on fire. She never plays to anyone else's song, even when she should, but it is always her choice. And that is what makes Katniss a Slytherin.


	3. Primrose Everdeen

A/N: In honor of the new Mockingjay trailer I have a new chapter. Enjoy!

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Let's talk about Primrose Everdeen. Prim, who straddled a fence with one side containing snakes and the other ravens, taken from life before she could ever decide where to jump.

Albus Dumbledore said that maybe they sorted children too early and he was right. Most children aren't sure who they are or what they value at 11 or 12 or 13 or sometimes even 14. Identity is not a fixed concept (although some children know themselves better than others), especially for those who are exposed to ideas different than their parents. At such an early age who you are is a constantly shifting idea and is ephemeral and adaptive. Not to mention sometimes, children are not ready to announce to the world (and their family) who they are and what they stand for. Sirius Black was the exception, not the rule. By Sorting at such a young age people are placed into titanium molds that people can only live up to, not grow out of, and so of _course_ almost everyone grows that way. The only way to break free is to have a core made of diamond and a will of fire hotter than titanium and they are so, so few people like that who exist.

Children above all learn by example and Prim's mother may be a Ravenclaw and her father a Gryffindor but it was her sister that raised her. Katniss, who would always give Prim the bigger portion of her food even though she was also starving but would do anything for Prim. Katniss, who gave Prim her cat even though she hated the animal. Katniss, who would do anything to keep her baby sister alive even if that meant dying in her place. Katniss, who would rather bite than roar to keep her family safe.

Let's talk about a girl who saw her sister carted off to death and thought if Katniss lived Prim would take care of her for once. Let's talk about a little girl from the Seam who dreamed of being a doctor and didn't care about her place in society, it was what she wanted. Katniss could fight and Prim could barely hurt a fly even if she tried, but she could make sure her sister was alright before slithering off to the next fight. She never wanted to feel as useless as the day her. Doctors are always needed, especially in the Districts, and Prim wants her life to be meaningful.

Let's talk about a little girl whose life was cut and although she will live on in the history books, forever remembered as the springboard for the Mockingjay's first flight, she will never be remembered for her own talents or make her own name. It will always be because of someone else (she could have cured cancer, made the next medical breakthrough but no one will ever find out). She could have made her own name, she had the ambition of a snake and the mind of a raven but she never had the opportunity to use both in tandem.

The ability to stop even death is a power worthy of a god, and even if it is for altruistic reasons Prim knows the value of power, has seen it take away her District's children and her sister and she hates the feeling of being powerless. The desire for power is not a sin, it's how you get there and what you do with it that determines who you are.

Let's talk about a girl who can keep her head in a crisis. Her sister brings in her pseudo-brother, beaten and bloody and so very pale (her sister's pallor is not much better) and is able to look at her sister and analyze the cut on her cheek, sees her mother's hands shake and with steady hands takes away the medicine and gives Gale the Morphling herself. Prim is a girl that

Let's talk about a little girl who saw bombs being dropped onto her home and once again had to run away from danger and let others deal with the aftermath, knowing that if her sister hadn't of volunteered and tried to save her she would be dead, but her district would be alive.

She's only 14 and she isn't a doctor yet and can only do so much for the wounded. Let's talk about a girl who had to listen to her sister's screams and whimpers night after night once they get to District 13 and know that the scars Katniss bears are ones that Prim will never be able heal, not the ones that matter. Some she's even the cause of (she knows it's not her fault, she didn't create the Hunger Games, but she is _responsible_).

Let's talk about a girl who refuses to be ignorant any longer and she may love Katniss to the moon and back but she is not a politician, so in this one field she makes Peeta her mentor. She looks at what he says to make people follow him and tries to do the same. When Plutarch try to separate her from Katniss she knows _exactly _what to say to make them back off, has the same ways with words Peeta has to make people listen. She is able to cut through lies, knows who to ask to get the truth and how to appeal to their nature to get the answers she wants. This is her Slytherin side at work. For her family she will do anything. By now Peeta's just as much family as Gale. She is the only one to come up with a possible solution on how to heal Peeta's memories, the others barely even try. She's not just smart, she's cleverand bright and intelligent. The ability to memorize different ailments and their cures are great, but she's the one who is _discovering _new ways to heal, or at least she's trying.

Katniss is heartbroken and despondent, so for once Prim takes care of Katniss and in the game of politics her eyes and ears are wide open. She's the one that points out to Katniss her worth to the rebellion, points out that if Katniss wants immunity for Peeta, wants anything at all and it is _hers_, they need her too much to say no (although she's not a fool, it's not getting their word that's hard it's making sure they keep it that's the challenge). She is able to see underneath the underneath, notices that Peeta is worth more alive than dead, knows that the way to break her sister is through her loved ones (it's how this all started). She's just relieved that there is some way she can take off some of the world on her sister's shoulders and lighten the load.

She's the one to take care of her sister now, makes sure she eats and sleeps and is aware of what is going on around her. This she can do.

She pays attention to everything she can, committing everything possible to memory in this new world, whether it be information about medicine or the different types of missiles that were taught in orientation for the new citizens of 13. You never know when a piece of knowledge might come in handy. Knowledge is power. This is why she could be a Raven. She never shies away from the truth, and when she hears what they did to Peeta's memories she sees her sister unable to ask what happened so she asks for her.

Let's talk about a little girl who loved animals, so much so she risked her life for a mangy old cat that she loved with all her heart. The alarm sounds and bombs are about to go off but she can't help but go back for the stupid old cat because this is one living being depending on her to keep it alive and she_ will not fail_. She's like her sister in that way.

Let's talk about a girl who isn't always strong but tries so hard to be the person her sister needs. Let's talk about a girl who wanted to put people back together and make them better than they were before. Let's talk about a little girl who has an older sister who would give her the world if she asked for it but never wanted it. A girl who could have been one of the greatest medical experts of her time, could have written her own name in history but had to let someone else do it before she had the chance. A girl who died because of the political machinations of people who refused to let go of power and wanted more and more, because of Gale's inability to let go of his Gryffindor blinders and see the destruction he is causing. Let's talk about a girl who wasn't even 14 years old yet died with her sister's name on her lips.

Let's talk about Primrose Everdeen, a girl who died before she could fully bloom.


End file.
